FohBoh MediaFohBoh - Food, restaurant tech and media news site for the restaurant industry.https://www.fohboh.com/
The Robots are hereTue, 05 Jun 2018 15:49:05 -0700https://www.fohboh.com/blog/the-robots-are-here
https://www.fohboh.com/blog/the-robots-are-here<h3><p>Get on board the robot train</p></h3><p>Robots have been around for a while, mostly in the back of the house and industrial settings. And, I think that's where they belong. Having a robot scoot around the dining room is just not a good use case in my opinion. Food-maker robots fall into four categories, (1) Vending (2) Station (3) Autonomous and; (4) Service.</p><p><strong>Vending robots</strong> include the more complex multi-beverage post mix soft drink boxes as well as the yogurt robots like <a href="https://seekingalpha.com/article/4170516-generation-next-franchise-brands-100-million-robotic-froyo-startup">FroYo</a>.</p><p><strong>Station robots</strong> include the newly minted (or trying to be) <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiD_6ex2ptY">Flippy</a>, or the more practical french fry station robot that can take the heat and doesn't mnd standing all day without a break.</p><p><strong>Autonomous robots</strong> are all new, like <a href="https://www.myblendid.com/">myBlendid</a>, <a href="https://thespoon.tech/spyce-kitchen-robot-restaurant-opening-this-spring/">Spyce</a>, <a href="http://chowbotics.com">Sally</a>, <a href="https://thespoon.tech/cafe-xs-second-generation-robot-barista-is-a-coffee-shop-in-a-box/">CafeX </a>and the 8 years in the making, <a href="https://www.eater.com/2016/7/1/12077990/robot-burgers-san-francisco-momentum-machines">Momentum Machines</a>' hamburger robot now called <a target="_blank" href="http://creator.rest/">Creator</a>, that are designed to operate completely without humans.</p><p><strong>Service robots</strong> that are designed, at least in the restaurant context, to deliver food to tables like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4ZnxfUInSw&feature=youtu.be">Bear.</a></p><p>There are more coming but the question beyond use case is what the business models are? To compete as a restaurant, or to partner with restaurant operators is the question.</p><a href=https://www.fohboh.com/blog/the-robots-are-here>Read More</a>GDPRThu, 24 May 2018 17:15:41 -0700https://www.fohboh.com/blog/gdpr
https://www.fohboh.com/blog/gdpr<p>We value your privacy and follow all anti-spam regulations including GDPR</p><p> </p><p>We are an email newsletter with subscribers in over 100 countries, so we of course, are fully compliant with GDPR as of May 21, 2018.</p><a href=https://www.fohboh.com/blog/gdpr>Read More</a>The delivery ROI debate continuesFri, 30 Mar 2018 09:50:39 -0700https://www.fohboh.com/blog/the-delivery-roi-debate-continues
https://www.fohboh.com/blog/the-delivery-roi-debate-continues<h3><p>The restaurant persepctive</p></h3><p>"Restaurants risk cannibalizing their more profitable dine-in sales by encouraging customers to stay at home." Ok, we can start with this ridiculous statement. This thinking is akin to the idea of rewarding bad behavior. Consumers have a choice now whether to cook, dine-out or dine-in, and if it's dine-in, to carryout, use curbside pickup or just takeaway. Excuse me, but , I'm a consumer and I am in charge here. Get real with change and adapt. Oh, and I love this statement from a restaurant chain CEO on if the order takes longer than expected or if the food comes cold and soggy they'll fault the restaurant and may not return - "We encourage all our competitors to do as much delivery as they can, so they can deliver lukewarm food to the people who order it." Man If this was a public company, and it may well be, I'd short that Company's stock right now and fire the head-in-sand CEO for ignoring a paradigm shift in how restaurants operate in 2018 and will in the future.</p><p style="text-align: center;"><em><strong>"By most analysts' accounts, industry-wide restaurant same store sales were flat in 2017. But, restaurant industry analyst, Piper Jaffray projected that $200 billion — one quarter of all restaurant industry sales — will shift to digital ordering and delivery over the next five years." </strong></em></p><p>Oh, and what if customers write a negative review about the wait time for delivery or if the food is cold, it could discourage other people from trying the restaurant. This is just BS and fear of success. Seriously, if anyone believes for a minute that their delivery dining experience is going to be pari passu with a dine-in experience then I they are delusional. It should be packaged well, and delivered in good form. But, I know, as do most reasonable people, that there may be some reheating involved. And, shame on the restaurant for putting a menu item on the digital menu that won't travel well. They are the...<a href=https://www.fohboh.com/blog/the-delivery-roi-debate-continues>Read More</a>Conversational CommerceThu, 25 Jan 2018 17:19:05 -0800https://www.fohboh.com/blog/conversational-commerce
https://www.fohboh.com/blog/conversational-commerce<a href=https://www.fohboh.com/blog/conversational-commerce>Read More</a>Dedicated to saving an industryMon, 15 Jan 2018 18:07:20 -0800https://www.fohboh.com/blog/dedicated-to-saving-an-industry
https://www.fohboh.com/blog/dedicated-to-saving-an-industry<p>We helped launch a community on Slack called Restaurant Tech in December of last year. It's targeted to suppliers, vendors, developers, consultants, practitioners and professionals working in the restaurant technology sector worldwide. The goal is semi-obvious; we're in this together, so let's help each other. If we nest and network, think, share, learn and teach and share ideas collaboratively, not competitively, then should we all benefit. The more you engage, the more you will benefit from this community.</p><p>So, after 30 days we have more than 140 community members and growing. Some folks are already communicating directly with other members. Others, just surfing around seeing who's, who and who's here.</p><p>FohBoh Media (http://fohboh.com) is the host, manager, co-owner and sponsor of <a target="_blank" href="http://resttech.co">Resttech.co</a>, and the Restaurant Tech Slack Community. Join us and connect with your peers. Together, collectively, we're changing how the restaurant industry works. Basically, technology is saving their ass; they just don't know that yet. :)</p><a href=https://www.fohboh.com/blog/dedicated-to-saving-an-industry>Read More</a>Voice is the ThingWed, 03 Jan 2018 14:43:06 -0800https://www.fohboh.com/blog/voice-is-the-thing
https://www.fohboh.com/blog/voice-is-the-thing<h3><p>Imagine this - everything is about voice</p></h3><p>I remember way back in 2009, when FohBoh was in its early days, meeting a Silicon Valley engineer/entrepreneur who changed my professional life. He showed me an early but working version of a targeted media aggregation tool. It was not a beautiful UI. But, the functionality and use cases blew my mind. It pre-dated most of the sophisticated social media monitoring and management systems and dashboards many of us use today. But, all I could think about during and after that meeting was how could I get my hands on this and productize it for the restaurant industry? Social media monitoring and related insights would be a must have for every restaurant in the world. And, they are.</p><p>I remember watching a television commercial showing a young, good looking Las Vegas casino owner eating a sloppy Carl's Jr. hamburger and chasing it down with a glass of full-bodied red wine. There was of course, a seductive, attractive and well dressed woman behind him. Combined, this scene glorified the simple pleasures of a great burger and the elegance of a paired glass of wine. And, what a paring: Burger + wine + glamor, the epitome of casual elegance...and maybe even a small bit of decadence. What could be better? Well, add a celebrity chef to bring it all together and bam, new food concept category was born. I knew this was going to happen. I even floated a proposal by a celebrity chef just to make sure my instincts were tuned in.</p><p>I feel the same way about voice as the original user interface, the most natural interface. Without going into all the reasons why and cite metrics, like "we speak at 140 words per min and can only type 60", and smart speakers like Amazon's Echo-Alexa, are "highly likely to realize fast user adoption than the smartphone", etc, I believe conversational commerce, restaurant AI, conversational UI, etc., will be game changing for this industry and grocery and retail, the airlines and hotels....<a href=https://www.fohboh.com/blog/voice-is-the-thing>Read More</a>10 Years of change - Happy anniversary FohBohFri, 10 Nov 2017 05:29:32 -0800https://www.fohboh.com/blog/10-years-of-change-happy-anniversary-fohboh
https://www.fohboh.com/blog/10-years-of-change-happy-anniversary-fohboh<h3><p>Happy 10th FohBoh!</p></h3><p>Maybe I'm just sentimental but 10 years is a big deal. We launched the same year Apple introduced the iPhone and smartphones changed our life. We launched when myspace.com was still the leading social network. We launched before social network was being used for customer engagement and business communications; long before Slack and Instagram and snapchat. A lot happened in the last 10 years for all of us.</p><p>Other changes...well, they are considerable really. Consider streaming entertainment and transportation and sleeping in stranger's houses and catching rides in stranger's cars. Think about Google maps! Amazing changes and a financial crisis. There are just too many to list and yet FohBoh keeps plugging away as a foodservice digital media company bringing news, information and connections to a changing and maturing industry.</p><p>Technology is transforming the restaurant industry at a pace we never expected, leaving the laggards behind. The opportunity to engage, generate sales and be more operationally efficient can no longer be ignored. Solutions must be adopted to keep pace with the consumer.</p><p>Beginning 2017, we enter a new decade with hope and promises that bring new complexities and challenges. But the restaurant industry in many ways, remain the same. Raw ingredients come in the back door, customers in the front with the magic happening, by daypart, in the middle; light, on-demand manufacturing meets retail services allowing humans to engage in conversation, take a break from the day-to-day pressures of modern life and enjoy a meal prepared by a passionate restaurateur. Romantic as that may sound, this business is gotten tough and the next 10 years will bring unanticipated challenges and opportunities to leverage.</p><p>FohBoh will continue to do its part, informing and presenting new thinking and connecting innovators with operators, curating and aggregating relevant content so you don't have to. Thanks for...<a href=https://www.fohboh.com/blog/10-years-of-change-happy-anniversary-fohboh>Read More</a>The Second WaveFri, 28 Jul 2017 15:31:28 -0700https://www.fohboh.com/blog/the-second-wave
https://www.fohboh.com/blog/the-second-wave<h3><p>What was</p></h3><p>The future is really predicated on prior events and it assumes we learn and evolve. Fair enough. I believe that as do many people I talk with about change and the forces that provide the energy for such change. Reflection is good and these learnings help us discover and invent what's next. There is no second act without a first. That, in my timeline started in 2007, about a decade ago, with the advent of the smartphone; Apple's iPhone was game changing and is the reason <a target="_blank" href="https://www.google.com/search?safe=off&q=most+valuable+company+in+the+world+2016&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj4sYiM76zVAhWJwVQKHbR6AlsQ1QIIdCgD&biw=1420&bih=875">Apple</a> today is the most valuable company on earth. Freedom, access and immediate connection to the world in the palm of your hand. It was pretty powerful when Steve Jobs announced it then and near magical now, in 2017.</p><p>So what was state of the art in restaurant technology like in 2007? Well, for serious operators, that would include a POS terminal and a fax machine. For serious operators in higher-end restaurants, maybe adding Open Table, a pioneering reservation system that used ethernet cable to connect to their black box. This was state of the art then. Sadly, there are tens of thousands of restaurants that still don't even have this "stack" in 2017.</p><p>The first wave of technology innovation and adoption focused on solving primarily consumer problems, or perceived consumer problems that a few tech-savvy entrepreneurs wanted to solve for their own benefit. With the smartphone growing in popularity, apps were a natural platform and relatively simple to create and deploy. The early entrants after reservations, were mostly trying to solve the restaurant discovery problem, to direct smartphone users to local restaurants. A few others got into the restaurant review game and along came loyalty, rewards and photo apps for sharing and then a barrage of social media apps that changed how we...<a href=https://www.fohboh.com/blog/the-second-wave>Read More</a>FohBoh - Looking to the future...Fri, 21 Jul 2017 17:57:05 -0700https://www.fohboh.com/blog/fohboh-looking-to-the-future
https://www.fohboh.com/blog/fohboh-looking-to-the-future<h3><p>November 1, 2007</p></h3><p>Wow, that's a long time ago. I could make this blog post much longer if I listed all that has changed since then. I'm talking about just me! Now, add everyone, well that would be a hell of a story. I do have to cite three just to give you perspective:</p><p>1. Myspace.com was the leading social media network</p><p>2. The iPhone was still a year away from being released</p><p>3. Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat not invented yet</p><p>4. Game of Thrones wasn't even a thing</p><p>Suffice it to say, a shit-pot of change happened. It's changed me, you and probably everyone and everything this past decade. But, there are a few things that basically remained the same like the fact foodservice professionals are more readers and consumers of information than writers of original content. FohBoh has, for the past few years anyway, been evolving as a global aggregator and curator of food, tech and other such relevant content that should be of interest to all segments and all sectors of the foodservice industry. Content is king, better content wins and that fosters increased audience engagement. This is digital media 101; <u>feed the beast </u>what they want and they will stay close to you. So, if content is king and the community relies on community members to create content, meaning blogs (not SPAM) to share, and community members don't do that, the community has a problem. A non-content, much less, "king" content problem. Hmmm. See the issue here?</p><p>So, it's now mid-2017 and FohBoh, as the restaurant community is dated. Our members, contacts and connections prefer to read more and write less frequently so we have to change too. Moreover, we realized we have access to contextually relevant content about technology internationally and are well versed and passionate about all matters relating to restaurant technology, we made the decision to go forward with our passion not hang on to our past. So, we broke the mirror off the FohBoh Community...<a href=https://www.fohboh.com/blog/fohboh-looking-to-the-future>Read More</a>